Wild Light Decade #04: Wednesday Piano Song (Patreon)

Hi there. Welcome to another instalment of the Wild Light Decade. A deeper dive than you ever imagined could be possible into an obscure, beloved album from your favourite obscure, beloved band.

This week we are bringing you something very rough around the edges. It is called Wednesday Piano Song. You can tell by the somewhat uncharismatic title that it really didn’t get very far in the overall scheme of things. In fact, it sounds a bit like it’s getting written as it’s getting recorded.

Not got any specific memories of this particular sketch coming together. This recording is: piano, bass guitar and synth. It is somewhat unusual in the fact that it seems to be played to a click track, is not aiming to be particularly quiet, but still doesn’t have any drums going on. It is possible that there were briefly drums involved, but evidently we gave up on this idea before bothering to record them.

In hindsight there’s definitely some potential in here somewhere. Towards the end, when the piano takes a step back from the needless Jim Steinman melodrama it’s hammering out, there’s some bass guitar melodies mingling with the right hand piano melodies that has a certain charm to it. Hard to say for sure why we didn't develop it further, but it could simply have been that there was already a bunch of material knocking about where the piano was fairly central that we felt was stronger.

A recording like this is not something we would ever share outside of this very specific context. But it feels like a great example of the kind of thing that was happening day-in, day-out during the Wild Light Sessions. Which is to say, we would confusedly manifest noise in the vague shape of a song, and then stop again. This is always our approach. We were not, have never been, and probably never will be, the kind of band that is able to happily jam around for hours. It’s always start-stop, with a mercilessly utilitarian goal of coming out with a song at the other end. Playing music for the sheer joy of playing music? Pah! Having fun means you’re not trying hard enough.

This is mostly a joke. But only mostly. We rarely stumbled upon ideas by playing together endlessly, having a bit of a jam, shouting out impromptu chord changes, taking turns to noodle, etc. etc. Rather, we’d have some kind of jump-off idea from somewhere, and we’d immediately try to conjure up the skeleton of a song or a part of a song to place that idea inside of. Often, the jump-off ideas would come from the piano, as is the case here.

If you're familiar with the earliest 65daysofstatic demos from a few thousand years ago, you may notice that the first two chords in the progression (D, F#min) are blatantly stolen from a very early song of ours called Requiem for Pre-Madonna.

After they repeat a few times, the drop into the rest of the progression is giving strong …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead energy isn’t it. This recording comes from a collection of recordings called ‘demos 2011’, so by this point …Trail of Dead’s phenomenal Source Tags and Codes had already been out for almost a decade but, needless to say, that albums lives forever-young in the collective heart of 65. Listen to the piano overture from the start of that record and decide for yourself the degree to which this recording rips it off.

In fact, maybe we that’s why we dropped it?

Since Rob didn’t make it onto this week’s mp3 here’s a photo of him about to do a take of something for Wild Light for real at Chapel Studios:

and here’s a photo of the corner of our eternally cold rehearsal room where Wednesday Piano Song was briefly conjured into existence, and then quickly abandoned:

That’s your lot!

See you next week, perhaps with something a little more fully-formed…

Take care out there, friends.